


the world is yours

by stillscape



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Core Four-Centric, F/M, Prohibition AU, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: Riverdale. 1931.Down-on-his-luck Archie Andrews, a struggling musician and boxer facing another depressing Christmas after the death of his father, laments to his childhood pal Betty Cooper that he could really use a drink. Much to his surprise, Cooper—whose innocent green eyes belie the sharp mind and take-no-prisoners attitude that’s allowed her to rise through the ranks in the Bureau of Prohibition—slips him the password to Riverdale’s most notorious speakeasy, La Bonne Nuit.“Get close to the owner’s daughter, if you can,” Cooper tells him. “I need a source.”Desperate for direction in his life, Archie agrees. But Veronica Lodge is no easy mark. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, and unbeknownst to Agent Cooper, she’s working to take her father’s empire down from the inside. Soon she’s recruiting Archie as a pawn in her own game of chess--and so, it seems, is her father.Meanwhile, Agent Cooper is having troubles of her own. While she watches Archie sink deeper into rum-running, her investigations are at risk of being derailed by an extremely persistent newspaperman with a stupid hat and an overzealous Underwood.(Varchie/Bughead/core four shenanigans)
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 24
Kudos: 41
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	the world is yours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andsmile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andsmile/gifts).



> Now that I am rereading what Vik in my attempted serotonin delivery service inbox, I am coming to the realization that she did not actually prompt me to write a fic. 
> 
> Whoops.

Somewhere along the line, a hole has been worn in the sole of Archie Andrews’ left boot. He realizes it the moment he jumps from the boxcar and lands in a puddle of murky slush. 

Gritting his teeth against the sudden, unwelcome dampness in his sock, Archie adjusts the Army rucksack slung over his shoulders and heads into town. 

His breath clouds the otherwise pristine cold. Not too far in the distance, the lights of his long-neglected hometown glitter and twinkle. His fingerless gloves, worn as thin as his boot soles, do little to protect his bruised, scabbed knuckles, so he shoves his hands as deep into his pockets as they’ll go. 

Despite the rucksack, the train-hopping, and his increasingly threadbare attire, Archibald Andrews is no hobo. He’s not destitute. He’s simply down on his luck. If worst comes to worst, he’ll pawn the leather gloves strapped to the outside of his rucksack and fight bare-knuckled. If his calculations are accurate, and he keeps to his best intentions, worst won’t come to worst until mid-February. For now, the coins in his pocket and the bills in his wallet will get him a bed at the YMCA and one hot meal per day. 

(Pawning the old acoustic guitar also strapped to his rucksack—that, Archie cannot comprehend.) 

“Stay with me in Chicago,” his mother had urged, but Archie simply could not. There was an itch in the soles of his feet, one that had started when his father died just before Archie graduated high school and that had not been assuaged by his tour in the Army. Nor had the itch been satisfied in the time since, spent mostly on the road and the rails, as he’d picked up odd music and boxing gigs. His father’s lifework, let go for a pittance, just before the creditors came calling. 

If only he’d had the foresight to sell off Andrews Construction before that horrible day in October of 1929. Two years later, the little money he’d gotten is close to gone. 

Times are hard for everyone, though. Archie knows that. He should be grateful to have gotten any money at all. He  _ is  _ grateful. He can afford to eat. He can afford to get his boot sole replaced. 

And he will, in the morning. After he’s stopped by Pop’s for coffee and a sinker. And if he might wish for that coffee and a sinker now, or for something a little stronger than coffee, well, he’ll just have to deal with the disappointment. 

  
  
  
  


Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe sits right on the train tracks that divide Riverdale’s North and South sides, but Archie had hopped off before the train made it that far east, wanting to avoid the brighter lights closer to town. This means that his route to the YMCA takes him past his home—or rather, the home that was once his. The home in which he grew up. The home in which he’d learned to hammer a nail, throw a football, play the guitar. 

At first, it seems as though Elm Street hasn’t been hit by the Depression at all. It’s early in December, but people have already begun to decorate, as though the bits and baubles of the holidays can stave off whatever misery might be encroaching from outside their little bubble. He sees Christmas candles in windows. He sees bows on mailboxes and garlands on lampposts. He sees smoke coming from chimneys and smells maple-roasted chestnuts in the wind. 

Then he sees his own house, dark and empty, paint peeling and window panes cracked. A large sign nailed to the post of the front porch reads  _ Property of First Riverdale Bank. No Trespassers.  _ There is no sign of the family to whom he’d sold the house, let alone his own. 

Here, Archie stops. Icy winds rush over him, biting the tips of his ears and nose, and he sniffles once; he thinks it’s more from the cold than emotion. 

He thinks he can hear a voice calling his name, too. But that can’t be right. 

“Archie,” says the voice, more insistently this time. “Archie Andrews. Is that you?” 

Archie turns to his right, and out of the darkness steps a familiar face. 

“Betty?” 

  
  
  
  
  


Betty Cooper looks  _ different.  _ As a girl, she was pretty in pink: more a tomboy than her mother would’ve wished, but she possessed what seemed to Archie a near-magical ability to stay clean and tidy even while she fixed the chain on his bicycle. Now, her childhood braids have been transformed to a sleek bun. She wears a soft blue sweater vest over a men’s button-down and wool trousers. 

“Where’s your mom?” he blurts out, because he simply cannot imagine even an adult Betty getting away with this kind of look were Alice Cooper still around. 

(Betty’s father, who might have bemusedly tolerated his favorite daughter wearing men’s clothing, died in a traffic accident years back. Archie remembers the funeral. They were in high school then. He’d felt an empty, impossible sympathy for Betty and her sister, never imagining that he’d be burying his own father before too much longer.) 

Betty, busily fixing tea at the stove, does not bother to look back at him. 

“With Polly and the kids. They went out West earlier last summer, after she lost the paper. They made it all the way to sunny California.” 

“She lost the paper?” He blinks at the news. 

“Quality local journalism in Riverdale is no more,” Betty replies. 

She carries two cups and saucers over to the table, and sets one in front of Archie. The sugar bowl and milk jug were already there, on a doily, when he walked into the kitchen, almost as though Betty had been expecting someone. 

“Archie, what have you been  _ doing?  _ You’re a mess,” she says—sharply, but not without affection. “There’s a bruise under your eye. You haven’t shaved. You have holes in your socks.” 

“I have holes in my boots.” 

“I told you boxing was going to be a rough living.” 

There’s more than a hint of  _ I told you so  _ in Betty’s voice. Ordinarily, Archie might protest. But here in her kitchen, with warmth seeping into his bones for what feels like the first time in weeks, he thinks he’ll give it to her. 

“You did,” he admits, dropping a sugar cube into his cup. He stirs and stirs and stirs, watching the liquid swirl around and around and around. 

“Drink your tea,” Betty orders. “I’ll draw you a bath.” 

“No, don’t bother.” Archie looks up. “I’d better be getting to the YMCA if I want to get a bed tonight.” 

“The YMCA? Don’t be stupid. I have this whole enormous house to myself. You can have Polly’s room.” 

“Really?” Archie gulps a sip of tea, which is still too hot to gulp comfortably. “You’re not worried about…” 

Riverdale is a small town, full of gossip, and liable not to look kindly on an unmarried young woman keeping an unmarried young man in her home overnight. And Betty is a Cooper, well-bred and well-mannered, respectable through-and-through. 

“We grew up next door to each other. Even if you did propose marriage when we were six, we’re practically siblings.” 

Suddenly, more of her words slide into place in Archie’s brain. “You’ve been living here  _ alone?  _ All this time?” 

He may not have been paying much attention to the news coming out of his hometown, but even he knows Riverdale’s relative remoteness from American civilization and its proximity to the Canadian border have allowed it to become a hotspot for bootlegging. This was so even before he left, by which time there were plenty of rumors about the Blossom enterprise distilling more than maple syrup. He assumes, somehow, that things have only gotten worse since. 

Betty scoffs. She rises gracefully from her chair. First she says, “I’m a big girl, Archie,” and then, as she tells him she’ll get some cookies she’d baked the day before and stretches up to reach a cabinet door, he catches sight of it: the holster at her waist, and the small silver revolver in it, its mother-of-pearl handle gleaming in the warm glow of her kitchen lights. 

  
  
  
  
  


He supposes it’s a good thing he hadn’t immediately blurted out to Betty that he could really use a drink.  _ Agent  _ Betty. Agent Elizabeth Cooper of the Bureau of Prohibition. But now that he has the mental image of Betty in her trousers and sensible heeled boots, sneaking down hallways and ducking behind cars with her pistol in hand, he cannot stop thinking about it. He shakes his head. He blinks at Betty. He bites into a cookie—molasses and ginger, his favorite—and blinks once more. 

“I could really use a drink.”  _ Damn it, Andrews.  _

Betty merely raises an eyebrow. 

“I’ll get that bath started,” she says. 

“I’ll only be in your hair for a day or two, Betty. I promise. Just until I find some work.” 

She shoots him a look that sends a shiver down his spine, even as he is sure she is also gazing at him fondly. 

“You won’t be imposing,” Betty tells him. “Not in the least.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He’s warm and dry and fastening the top button of an old set of Mr. Cooper’s pajamas when Betty appears in the doorway of Polly’s old room with her hands held behind her back. 

“Good bath?” 

“The best one I’ve had in months.” 

Betty lets loose a tiny, ladylike snort. “The only one you’ve had in months, by the looks of you. Guess it was a good thing my mom likes to hold onto the past.” 

The pajamas are too big, but he’s managed to cinch in the drawstring enough. The socks—hand knit a long time ago by Mrs. Cooper, he thinks—are lumpy, but warm and free of holes. 

“Thank you, Betty,” he says. “For everything. I can’t pay you in dough, but if I can—I don’t know, fix anything up around here for you, or—” 

He stops blabbering when Betty whips something from behind her back and tosses it to him. Reflexively, Archie catches it: a flask, and filled with liquid. Cocking a confused eyebrow at Betty, he uncaps the flask and takes a sniff.

Rum. Spiced rum, and strong. Betty flashes him a grin. 

“My specialty is ice,” she says, which leaves Archie completely nonplussed. “You said you could use a drink. Go ahead. Take a sip.” 

“You’re a federal agent,” he says, dumbstruck. “What would happen if someone found out? Your bosses? I mean, your  _ job—”  _

Betty leans against the doorframe, folding her arms across her chest. “My  _ job _ is to stop the flow of hooch, Archie. That’s what my bosses expect me to do. If a little bit of said hooch has to be, shall we say, recirculated into the economy? Well, let’s just consider that the cost of doing business.” 

“...what?” 

“I knew you’d say you wanted to do something to help me in exchange for staying here.” 

“You did?” 

“I’ve known you our whole lives.” 

Archie has known Betty their whole lives, too, but he never would have imagined that the girl who helped him learn to read, who fixed him lemonade in summers, who once admitted she’d cried when he’d asked another girl to a school dance would become a prohi. 

Clearly, though, Betty knows a lot that he does not. 

Keeping his eyes on her, he takes a swig from the flask. Just one. The rum burns as it goes down. He’s not sure he’s ever tasted anything so good. 

Betty waits for him to cap the flask, and then says, “Turn it over.” 

On the bottom, Archie finds a strange marking etched into the metal: lines and angles, vaguely reminiscent of a large banker’s desk. 

“What’s this?” 

“That’s the signature of my target,” she tells him. “The latest player to enter Riverdale’s bootlegging game. Hiram Lodge.” 

“Hiram Lodge,” Archie repeats. It’s a fine, strong name. He tries to imagine the man behind it, and fails. 

“He has one soft spot.” 

Suddenly, Archie realizes that he is being briefed. That by accepting the drink, or the pajamas, or possibly even just the tea, he has agreed to do whatever it is that Betty wants him to do, whether he wants to or not. 

In the next moment, he realizes that he  _ does  _ want to do it. Whatever it is. 

“His daughter,” Betty continues, apparently oblivious to the stream of expressions Archie can feel crossing his face. “Veronica. She runs La Bonne Nuit; that’s his speakeasy. But she and her father have a complicated relationship. And Hiram doesn’t let much slip to many people. I think she’s my best bet for an inside source.” 

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“My specialty is ice,” Betty repeats. “That’s the password to get into the speakeasy.” 

“You want me to get into the speakeasy?” 

“I could get into the speakeasy myself, if I wanted to. I want you to get close to Veronica,” she says, in that irritating tone of voice she’s always used when she’s three steps ahead of him and wondering why he hasn’t caught up yet. “You can do that for me, can’t you, Archie?” 

  
  
  
  
  


Archie’s always been an early riser, and so it’s no trouble for him to slip from the house the next morning before Betty wakes. She seems to have anticipated that he would try. A pair of Mr. Cooper’s shoes had been left in the hallway, just outside Polly’s door, and a pair of men’s galoshes in the entryway. For a moment, Archie feels especially grateful for his red hair; he could dress entirely in Mr. Cooper’s clothes without being mistaken for their original owner. 

He is  _ not  _ dressed in Mr. Cooper’s clothes, and supposes his faint hope that Betty would provide him with a full outfit and offer to wash his own might be going one step too far. 

The cobbler isn’t open at this hour, or at least Archie doesn’t expect the cobbler to be open at this hour. He heads straight to Pop’s for the coffee and donut he’s been dreaming of since he realized the rails were leading him back to Riverdale. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


From the outside, Pop’s looks a bit more run-down than Archie remembers, but not so much as to alarm him. On the inside, nothing has changed. Breathing a sigh of relief, Archie takes a seat at the counter and signals to the waiter for coffee. 

Only a few other customers are in Pop’s this early in the morning. Most of them look to be workers from the overnight shift at the Blossom maple syrup distillery; Archie can’t help but take a deep breath in, wondering if they have, in fact, been distilling something else and, if so, whether he might be able to smell it on them. Then he wonders, absently, if it might be worthwhile to head down to the Blossom distillery himself later on, see if they’re hiring. 

One man sits at the other end of the counter, near the glass dome containing today’s doughnuts, his entire head concealed behind a newspaper. 

“Anything to eat?” asks the waiter, sliding a coffee cup over to Archie. 

“Doughnut.” 

“What kind?” 

Archie turns to look at the selection. Chocolate frosted, plain vanilla, and cinnamon sugar options all stare back at him. So does the man, who’s now lowered his paper to reveal a face almost as familiar as Betty’s. 

“Never have been able to make up your mind, have you?” 

“Chocolate,” Archie says quickly, his eyes never leaving his childhood friend. “Hi, Jughead.” 

“Hi yourself.” Jughead slides from his stool, paper in hand, arriving just as Archie’s doughnut does. “What’s the deal, Andrews? You couldn’t drop your old pal a telegram to say you were coming back?” 

“Honestly, Jug, I didn’t know I was coming back until I’d almost gotten here.” 

Jughead raises an eyebrow, nearly up to the brim of the felt whoopee cap he’d adopted the year before they became trendy, and stubbornly never removed since. “Still could’ve wired.” 

“Sure,” Archie agrees, because he suspects that it’s just as pointless to argue with Jughead now as it was in high school. 

“So. What’s been going on with the Archie Andrews we’ve all known and loved?” 

“Not much.” He knows all too well what his life has become; it’s still painful to admit it. “A welterweight match here, a gig playing guitar there. You?” 

“Ace reporter, my boy.” Jughead slides his paper across the counter, and Archie sees both that it’s a copy of the  _ Riverdale Register  _ and that the front page story has a byline of none other than Forsythe P. Jones III. 

“Wow.” What Archie wants to say is  _ Good for you, Jug;  _ what comes out is “Wait, I thought the paper went out of business.” 

“Out of business? Naw, it just got sold. Where’d you hear it shut down?” 

“From a friend.” 

Jughead considers this for a long moment; then his eyes narrow. “Archibald.” A lopsided grin begins to emerge. “Your  _ friend _ wouldn’t happen to be a lovely blonde agent with killer legs and a revolver to match, now, would she?” 

“Betty?” 

“That’s the one.” Before Archie can stop him, Jughead swipes the doughnut and takes a huge bite. “What’s she to you, anyhow?”

Crumbs spray across the  _ Riverdale Register.  _ Archie does not know what to say. 

  
  
  
  
  


“A thorn in my side is what he is,” Betty spits out, later that night. “Not a reporter. Not a reporter worth his salt, anyway. What I wouldn’t give to get my red pen on one of his so-called ‘articles.' Have you tried to read his prose? It’s denser than this fruitcake my aunt Esther sent for Christmas.” 

She drops said fruitcake to the kitchen floor, where it lands with a  _ thud.  _

“Always turning up where he isn’t wanted,” she continues. “Always trying to give me ‘information’ in exchange for government intelligence. How did you say you knew him?” 

“Our dads used to work together. A long time ago. Before my mom left.” 

Betty’s eyes narrow in much the same way Jughead’s had. “He didn’t go to school with us.” 

“No. He went to Southside High.” 

“Hmm.” Her lips press together in the thinnest of lines, but she says no more about Jughead Jones. Instead she walks over to a kitchen chair and hands Archie a brown pinstripe suit that’s been draped over the back of it. 

He whistles in appreciation. Archie hasn’t much of an eye for clothing, but even he can tell this is quality material. 

“It’s nothing much,” Betty tells him at once. 

(Perhaps he can’t tell, after all.) 

“Courtesy of Uncle Sam. We can’t have you infiltrating La Bonne Nuit in your everyday garb. They’ll never let you in the door.” 

“Where is this speakeasy, anyway?” 

“In the basement of Pop’s,” Betty says, now bustling to the hall closet. 

“In the _ basement of Pop’s?”  _

  
She opens the closet door, roots around inside for a moment and hands Archie a handsome overcoat in lieu of answering his question. “Now, if for some reason you get picked up by local law enforcement, don’t worry about it. Tom Keller’s still sheriff. He might dust you up a little or throw you in a cell for the night, but one call from me and he won’t bother you ever again.” 

“Betty, I’m starting to not like the sound of this.” 

“It’ll be fine if you stick to our plan,” she says impatiently. 

But as far as Archie can ascertain, the only plan so far is for him to get close to Veronica Lodge—and Betty has not explained how  _ that  _ is supposed to work. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He finds the secret entrance—at the back of Pop’s root cellar, disguised as a broom closet—and gives three sharp knocks on the door. A moment later, a tiny window swings open. 

“I heard you were looking for someone with my talents,” he says, trying to keep any nervousness out of his voice. 

The man on the other side of the door sneers at him. “Yeah? What talents might those be?”

“My specialty is ice.” 

The door swings open, and all of Archie’s senses are instantly flooded: with golden warmth and cigarette smoke, with laughter and, at the tip of his tongue, the slightest taste of danger. 

  
  
  
  
  


He hands his coat to the gal behind the counter and pockets his ticket, which he worries against his thigh while he scopes out the joint. From one corner, a trio of Black women coat the bar in the best jazz Archie’s ever heard outside Chicago. The lead singer takes notice of him. She smiles and winks and shimmies, the fringe at the hem of her dress swishing invitingly. 

She’s beautiful, and so is her voice. But she is not Archie’s target. He smiles back, and continues to the bar. 

La Bonne Nuit isn’t crowded, but neither is it empty. Archie spots a few familiar faces, guys he knew from high school mostly, but keeps his head down and his hat on, not wanting to draw attention to himself. 

He finds an open bar stool and sits. Coincidentally—or perhaps not—the next stool over is occupied by Jughead Jones. 

“Archibald,” he says, as genially as is possible for Jughead. “What’s a swell gal like you doing in a place like this?” 

Before Archie can formulate a response, a woman’s voice says, “Torombolo! You didn’t tell me you had any friends.” 

“I’m a sociable guy,” Jughead protests, amiably. He’s not drinking, Archie notices. Or rather, he’s drinking coffee. 

Archie looks up, and the sight of her socks him with the strength of thirty mean left hooks. 

“Going to introduce me?” 

“Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews. Archie’s an old pal; we were kids together. Archie Andrews, Veronica Lodge.” 

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Veronica extends a small, well-manicured hand over the bar, and Archie understands that the best thing to do is press his lips to her knuckles. 

He wants to press his lips to the hollow of her neck. 

He wants to press all of her into satin sheets. 

“What can I get you, Archie Andrews?” she asks him, arching a dark and perfect eyebrow. “We’re currently serving coffee, tea, and root beer.” 

“Uh,” Archie stammers. “What do you recommend?” 

“I’m partial to the tea, myself.” 

She sashays off to get it before waiting for his agreement. Archie follows her hips with his eyes. 

“The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger,” Jughead intones. 

“What?” 

A hand claps his back. “The good bard, Archibald. Shakespeare.  _ Venus and Adonis.”  _

Veronica turns back to Archie, holding a little flowered teacup with both hands. Her amethyst dress glows in the speakeasy’s lowered lights. 

The path is smooth, indeed. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(to be continued...)  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
